


The Patronus Charm

by RuinsPlume



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: First Time, Group Wanking, M/M, Marauders' Era, Masturbation, Porn with Feelings, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-07-12 21:48:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7123723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RuinsPlume/pseuds/RuinsPlume
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now he understands: all the effort he has spent trying to keep his own desire from himself is as useless as trying to keep the werewolf from himself—there is no <em>from </em>himself—no separation. It is <em>in</em> him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Patronus Charm

**Author's Note:**

> With huge thanks to M, beta extraordinaire.

 

The Patronus Charm

 

It is two weeks before O.W.L.s and an hour before dinner, and in the Marauders’ dormitory the only one studying is Remus. While it’s true that Sirius is practicing the hover charm, it is with the sole purpose of making quills and sweets and dirty socks go floating around the room; Remus does not count that as studying. From the corner of his eye he watches Sirius levitate a rumpled handkerchief over the chessboard, where James is destroying Peter’s defensive line. Remus rereads the sentence in front of him for the fourth time as a chocolate frog hits him on the side of the neck.

“Padfoot, _no_.” 

Remus shoves the frog aside without looking up. From the chessboard comes a smashing sound followed by a terrible wail as James’s queen knocks Peter’s knight off his horse. Sirius waves the handkerchief down over the dead knight like a shroud. The chocolate frog nudges the side of Remus’s nose.

“Auugh!” Remus howls in frustration, batting away the frog and shoving his book aside. 

The other boys look round in surprise.

“You don’t want to study yourselves, that’s fine,” Remus yells, “but do you three have ANY interest in my passing? Do I have to remind you I've got enough strikes against me as it is, that I _have_ to do well?” The chocolate hovers, bonks Remus again. “And Sirius, would you keep your bloody fucking frog out of my nostril?”

Even before he’s finished the words, Remus regrets them. Sirius looks like a shamed puppy.

“ _Accio_ spell book,” James says. Remus’s book shoots across the room, causing Peter to duck with what Remus considers Quidditch-worthy reflexes.

James catches the book and looks at the cover. “ _Practical Defensive Magic_? Why are you studying this, of all things, Moony? You’re great in DADA.”

“Only at some parts,” Remus corrects him. “I still have trouble with boggarts, and I messed up the anti-jinx practice last week, and I’ve never even tried the extra credit, which I’ll need if I can’t repel the Jellylegs curse again, and—”

“What extra credit?” James asks.

“The Patronus Charm. Honestly, do you expect to just walk in there completely unprepared and ace it anyway?”

“Probably.” James grins. “But I practice the Patronus Charm all the time, don’t I, Sirius?”

“Did someone say, 'Patronus Charm'?” Sirius perks up, his eyes doing the thing that reminds Remus of Padfoot when he gets wind of a new scent. “Prongs,” Sirius says solemnly, “our Moony needs help. It’s our duty as Marauders to help him.”

Remus glances from Sirius to James and back again. Now Sirius’s entire body has gone into Padfoot tracking mode—a barely-contained excitement, full attention. Sirius has caught the scent of something he wants. Remus doesn’t know what it is yet, but James does: James nods briskly, tossing Remus’s spell book to the floor and standing up.

“Patronus Charm, then. Wormtail, you in?”

“Wha—uh, yeah. Okay.” Peter’s pale skin is suddenly flushed with color.

“In what?” Remus asks.

“ _In_ -ish-ee-ated,” Sirius drawls slowly, and laughs, a single high bark. He begins pacing around the room in some sort of agitation Remus cannot fathom. He can’t fathom any of it, actually: as so often happens, the other three seem to know what is going on and he absolutely doesn’t.

“Initiated,” Remus repeats, looking at James. In matters of Remus’s ignorance, James is generally the most sympathetic.

“Christ, Moony,” James says, “did you even _live_ in this dorm all last year?”

“But Remus wasn’t here,” says Peter haltingly. “When we, you know. Did it the other time. It was when we were working out how to transform. So Remus wasn’t.”

“That’s true,” says James.

“Let’s _go_ then,” says Sirius at the same time, doing a little jump in front of the window. He's no longer content with merely pacing. He stretches his entire body away from the other three as if they’re holding an invisible leash, restraining him when he wants to run. “Come _on_ , Prongs. It’s been ages.”

James runs his fingers through his hair and considers. “We need an image.”

“Picture of Evans and McKinnon!” says Peter.

“We are _not_ using Evans for this. Get that muggle rag of yours.”

Peter scurries to his bed and rummages beneath it, retrieves a magazine and tosses it onto the floor in the center of the room. Remus sees an ad for whisky on the back cover. James and Peter and Sirius stand around it and Sirius pulls Remus into the circle between himself and James. Now the four of them are clustered around the magazine, just elbows’ width apart from one another, and even now, Remus doesn’t get it, can’t let himself comprehend what they’ve gotten him into.

James points his wand at the magazine, whose pages begin flipping backward. Remus sees skin—bare skin, girl skin, breasts with pink nipples, breasts with brown nipples, girl hips and skimpy bikinis and open kiss-shaped mouths and more breasts. James mutters something Remus doesn’t catch and one of the pages, which seems to have been attached the wrong way round, opens out from itself to reveal the centerfold, a sandy-haired girl standing topless in the middle of what appears to be an out-of focus cornfield. Her nipples are erect and her mouth is half-open, wet with a just-kissed smile.

“All right, Marauders,” James cries, “wands out!”

And Remus—stupid, imbecile, _literal_ Remus—takes out his cypress-with-unicorn-hair-core-ten-and-a quarter-inches _actual_ _wand,_ even as the other three draw back their robes, unzip their trousers and whip out.

Remus turns what must be past crimson, past violet. His whole face is going to burst into flame any second and his three best friends are stroking themselves. Remus must be jinxed with the full Bodybind Curse because he can’t move at all. Just inside the lower left corner of his peripheral vision he can make out Sirius’s right arm, gliding back and forth, slowly and with great assurance. Sirius taking his sweet time, no rush, Sirius deeply content and actually _humming something,_ and Remus can smell him: boy and lust and Siriusboyslust and _no,_ Remus cannot, _will_ not let Sirius see what is happening inside him. With enormous effort Remus manages to pivot his cursed body toward James because if Sirius sees Remus’s face right now, Sirius will _know_ and then everything Remus loves will be ruined.

On Remus’s right, James is wanking away as if he always does it with his best friends watching. Opposite him, Peter’s hand is flying up and down, at top speed already. James begins sweet-talking the girl in the centerfold.

“You’re in terrible danger, love,” James coos. “You’re a muggle, so you don’t know, but there’s dementors coming, and you need our charms to protect you, you need our lovely, lovely, happy thoughts of you to drive them away, love—our lovely—”

James’s breath is getting ragged, and Remus, frozen, cannot look away from his hand riding his shaft, the nest of dark curls at the base—oh, there is nowhere safe Remus can look—look at James’s _face_ , for God’s sake—

“Our lovely charms,” James is saying, “will ahhh—will protect you—protect those sweet tits—of yours, those sweet—girl bits—those uhh, _EXPECTO PATRONUM!”_

James comes, groaning and laughing. It shoots straight up into the air in a glorious white arc, and lands in puddles on the girl’s bare thigh.

Peter gives an enormous shudder, _Expecto Patronum_ escaping brokenly from his throat, and comes too, thick and clotted, dribbling over his hand and down onto his shoes. He blushes.

Remus notices the blush and feels himself unfreeze. He is still holding his stupid wand, his real wand, which he points at Peter’s shoes.

“ _Tergeo_.” The puddles disappear.

“Ta,” says Peter, not looking up. “Showers, then.” He darts for the door, tripping over James’s discarded robes.

James yanks up his trousers and looks at Sirius. Remus, before he can stop himself, follows James’s gaze. Sirius’s opened jeans hang precariously off his hips. He is still stroking himself slowly, his cock huge and hard and silky-looking in his hand, his other hand inside his shorts cupping his balls. His face is turned not toward the spattered magazine but to the ceiling, his eyes half closed and his mouth half open, making a noise that has changed from hum to low growl. Remus looks away, but too late: he can feel that growl in his own cock now.

“You’re late, mate,” James says to Sirius.

Sirius stops wanking and gives James a snarl, teeth bared. If he were Padfoot right now, he might bite him.

“Some of us like to savor the moment, Prongs.” He points his cock at James and waggles his eyebrows. “You want to help me, then?”

“Shirtlifter.” James turns away from Sirius and looks at Remus, furrowing his brows.

Remus understands the frown: James is worried because Remus has just shown himself to be more of a hopeless idiot than anyone ever realized—a fully-clothed idiot holding a cypress wand, incapable of speech, face the color of a boiled beet. The initiation has not gone as planned. But James, Remus sees, wants to ignore all this and cheer him up. So James pats Remus on the head, and then, lest the gesture seem condescending, punches him on the arm.

“That, my dear Moony, is merely your initiation into the Patronus Charm. Now _we_ ” —he indicates himself and Sirius, who is still scowling— “are experts already, but with time and practice— _lots_ of practice, mind you—Messrs. Prongs and Padfoot guarantee excellent results.”

He retrieves his wand from his discarded robes and points it first at himself and then at Peter’s magazine. “ _Tergeo.”_ The stains shimmer and vanish. James points his wand again—“ _Accio_ magazine”—and it flies into his hand, the pages refolding themselves.

“Hey, we haven’t finished yet,” Sirius protests.

“YES WE HAVE,” says Remus, finding his voice again at last. It _is_ finished, because James Potter Says It Is. James is the best Marauder ever, he has SAVED Remus, and Remus looks at him with gratitude. James chucks the magazine onto his bed and ambles toward the showers, his hand doing the patented James Potter Hair Rumpling Move as a kind of parting wave.

“Moony.”

Remus feels Sirius’s fingers encircle his wrist. Sirius has let his robes fall closed, but Remus, eyes glued to the floor, notices that Sirius’s pants are now down around his ankles.

Desperately, Remus rumples his own hair, as if the gesture were a portkey that would transport him into the showers along with James, where he would be safe with James and Peter and where he will not give himself away and ruin everything. Because Sirius can read Remus the way Padfoot can scent him. Remus has been going crazy all year trying to keep the true scent of himself buried, because if Sirius digs it up it will be the end of the Marauders, the end of Pack, the end of them loving Remus—the end of everything Remus loves.

“Hey, Moony.” Sirius’s voice is gentle, not teasing. “Where’d you go?”

Just as there are no Marauders without James, there is no Pack without Padfoot, who moves among wolf and deer and rat with equal ease. All last autumn Remus was afraid the werewolf would tear deer and rat apart, but Padfoot has found a way to make it Pack, to make it _pax_ , to make a pact that even the werewolf cannot break. And now he will lose all of it. Remus is trembling.

“Moony, it’s just me.” Sirius squeezes Remus’s wrist. “Look.”

Remus looks up and Sirius smiles at him, but it's not his usual wicked Black grin. This is something softer.

“It’s a rite of passage,” Sirius says, voice suddenly hoarse. “It’s the truly great wizards who can conjure Patronuses. I have a responsibility here, you know. To you.”

Remus’s breath catches in the back of his throat. Sirius releases Remus’s wrist and raises his hands to Remus’s collarbones, his fingers fishing for the clasp of his robes. He finds it. His fingers graze Remus's chest as he pushes the robes back over Remus's shoulders and then they are off him, sliding down over his arms. A pile of black fabric hits the floor. Remus is standing in a teeshirt and an old pair of sweatpants, and behind the threadbare material of his pants his erection must be clearly visible, hard and high against his waistband.

“Remus.”

It comes out a near-whisper and Remus is astonished to realize that Sirius is struggling too.

“I—Moony. I won’t touch you or anything. I just—”

But Remus wants Sirius to touch him, wants it so hard he cannot speak. He opens his mouth, closes it.

“Just would you—hold yourself. Please.”

Remus stops breathing. Sirius Black is begging him. Sirius Black is begging him to touch himself. They have entered another universe Remus did not know existed and everything in that universe is named yes. Shaking, clammy-fingered, Remus fumbles the waistband of his sweats down over himself, and his burning cock leaps up through the cool of the room, up against the heat of his belly and out toward the heat radiating off Sirius, who is still not touching him but is standing very, very close.

Remus slides his hand down over the head of his cock, down over the shaft. He closes his eyes. His balls tighten and his hand loses its clamminess as he strokes himself into this new world that includes doing this with _Sirius_ , his boysmell and dogsmell and sexsmell and lovesmell and Remus is going to shake apart with the pleasure of it because all at once, and without thinking the words for it, he understands: all the effort he has spent trying to keep his own desire from himself is as useless as trying to keep the werewolf from himself—there is no _from_ himself—no separation. It is _in_ him. All of this.

“Sirius,” gasps Remus, his eyes flying open. Sirius’s eyes are fixed on his, dilated and glassy. Sirius shifts his breathing so that they are panting together, Sirius’s hand and breath moving in time with his, Sirius’s eyes holding him, Sirius’s body showing him, keeping him, taking him.

 _This_ is magic, what they’re doing now. It’s not some sniggering fifth-year DADA joke. There is a magic in Remus’s body that he did not even know was there, and Sirius has found it. Remus strokes himself harder, sweeter—loving even—amazed to discover that in _his_ body, in Remus Lupin’s boy body, there is something called joy.

“Moony.” Sirius’s voice is shredded. “Come. _Expecto Patronum._ ”

The most intense pleasure Remus has ever known explodes through him. A stream of white shoots from the tip of his cock onto Sirius, and Sirius throws back his head and moans, hips bucking forward, and the hot jet of him bursts out against Remus’s belly, and Remus shoots again and Sirius is on him, he is on Sirius, they are coming against each other, pressing into each other; Remus is holding him and finding his mouth, the heat and sweet and flavor of his mouth, and Sirius’s lips are on his, Sirius sucking Remus’s lower lip, finding his tongue, eating his tongue, hands everywhere; and mouth-moan and cock-moan and then somewhere deep in Remus’s belly, all the stars of this new universe burst into now. Remus crumples to his knees on the floor, dragging Sirius down with him, his chest heaving as if he is sobbing, but what shakes him is not sobs.

Galaxies burn in and out of existence, new solar systems are formed. In this just-created universe, Remus has discovered his body can do something besides hurt and betray him. It can fulfill him. Planets begin orbiting their suns, and at some point in the formation of this cosmos, Sirius raises his head from Remus’s chest and listens with the dog hearing that always stays with him.

“They’ve shut off the water in the showers,” he says. “They’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Oh, God.” Remus scrambles up, collapses again. Jellylegs indeed. He staggers toward his bed and falls onto it. The old universe is back now, but Remus has lost his place in it. Where have they traveled to? Who is he to Sirius now, after what they’ve just done?

Remus rolls onto his side and watches, tense, as Sirius half-crawls about the room, collecting their discarded wands and robes. He stumbles over to Remus and flops down beside him, waving his wand at the bed curtains and mumbling a sticking charm.

Remus sits up at once.

“We can’t hide in here. James and Peter—”

“Yes we can. They’ll think it’s just you—don’t make that face, I can be quiet—they’ll think I’ve gone and that you’ve shut yourself in. Because you’re embarrassed. It’s what you’d do, right?”

Remus blushes. It is.

“They’ll come in and get their things and then they’ll leave. No problem, Moony.”

It is typical, Remus thinks, that Sirius considers only the matter of the next two minutes. He, Remus, is already seeing the greater problem: the next two weeks, the next two years. If the others find out—tomorrow, next week, ever—but then Sirius pulls Remus back down on the bed and looks right at him. Slate-colored eyes, thickly lashed. Whatever it was that Remus was worried about dissolves.

Eyes Remus has always thought of as cat-shaped, despite the dog. Eyes full of—what is it—yes: Sirius asking permission. To stay here with Remus, to touch him again.

 _Yes_ , Remus thinks at him. _Yes yes yes yes_. Tentatively at first, he runs his fingers through Sirius’s hair.

Sirius gives a shudder of pleasure, and Remus, emboldened, plants a series of kisses along the outer edge of Sirius's ear. Sirius ducks his head and then his lips are all up and down Remus's neck, mumbling something in a singsong whisper that Remus can’t quite hear.

“What’s that?” he asks woozily.

“The Patronus,” Sirius repeats, raising his head a bit, “is produced when the witch or wizard successfully conjures a memory so suffused with happiness that even dementors and inferi cause no harm.”

Remus scoots down until their faces are level, their noses just touching. He’s not sure how to say what he’s feeling, how much it means to him, the depth of this magic. So he just gazes.

“Remus,” Sirius whispers after a moment. “You’re thinking something.”

Remus nods. “I think I can produce one now,” he murmurs. “A Patronus. Because—because now—I have a happy enough memory.”

Sirius nuzzles his head against Remus’s cheekbone.

“Moony. You’ll get top marks in DADA, I know it.”

“Bugger the marks,” says Remus, and kisses Sirius again.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please comment!


End file.
